Panetta Regrets White House’s FBI Files Role

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said Sunday that an apology was due to those people--including a number of prominent Republicans--whose FBI background files turned up in the executive mansion nearly three years ago.

President Clinton said later that he stood by Panetta’s remark, but Republicans continued to protest. Tony Blankley, press secretary to House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and one whose FBI record turned up at the White House, said, “The case is not closed.”

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One as Clinton flew from Washington to Las Vegas on Sunday, Panetta said: “I can assure the American people that that kind of mistake has not happened in the last two years and we have taken procedures and precautions to ensure that that will never happen again.”

Speaking on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” before leaving for Las Vegas, Panetta said: “There was no improper use made of those files. As far as we can determine, nothing was done with that information. It was not passed on to any officials.”

But acknowledging the mistake, he added, “I think an apology is owed to those that were involved.”

Clinton, in Las Vegas for a political fund-raiser, endorsed Panetta’s public expression of regret.

“I completely support what he said,” the president told reporters in a brief exchange at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. But he refused to issue an apology of his own, saying instead that a “completely honest bureaucratic snafu” occurred as the new administration was trying to “straighten out who should get security clearances to come to the White House.”

The White House has said the examination of the files had been halted after covering names starting with the letters A through G. The search was said to have been conducted by an Army clerk on temporary duty at the White House.

Panetta said the clerk, working on routine FBI background checks of potential Clinton appointees to top government jobs, used an outdated roster that listed Republicans instead of Democrats. The White House has returned the files to the FBI, he said.

But pointing to shifting accounts about how the White House handled the data from the FBI files, Blankley, appearing on CNN’s “Inside Politics Weekend,” said: “Investigators and the prosecutors have to go in and look and find out what the facts are. What we find is every day there’s a new explanation; new information comes out.”

In addition to Blankley’s file, the FBI reports include those on former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, former White House Chief of Staff Kenneth M. Duberstein and more than 300 others who had undergone security checks and held White House passes at one time.

On Saturday, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, charged that the compilation “reads like a Clinton enemies list.”

“The White House has now been forced to admit that Bill Clinton’s aides used their power, the FBI, to gain access to private files of some of Clinton’s top political adversaries,” he said at a political rally in Georgia with Gingrich.

“I believe that President Clinton owes an apology to the individuals involved and to all Americans for this sad invasion of privacy,” Dole said.

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Panetta’s daylong tenor of contrition on Sunday went silent when it came to Dole’s charges that the incident “smells to high heaven.”

“When Sen. Dole gets on the stage with Speaker Gingrich, he begins to take on some of the same shoot-from-the-hip approaches. It’s shoot first and ask questions later,” Panetta said.

Panetta noted that the FBI and Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr were looking into the matter and that the White House was therefore precluded from launching its own inquiry.

Las Vegas was Clinton’s first stop on a three-day political swing through the West. He led a round-table discussion at UNLV on juvenile justice programs before attending a fund-raiser at the Henderson, Nev., home of Las Vegas Sun Publisher Brian Greenspun, a former Georgetown University classmate. The event was expected to bring in $500,000 for Democratic candidates. White House officials said that roughly half the money at the $10,000-a-head reception would come from gambling interests.

Clinton attended another fund-raiser in San Francisco at the home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein before flying to San Diego to spend the night.

Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Broder from Las Vegas.